The date was October 5th and both William and Mary were 25 years of age. William Hickson’s occupation was “nailor” and his residence was Killorglin. Mary Needham’s occupation is blank and her residence was in Cloverfield.

Killorglin is a well known town in Kerry, but I cannot locate a Cloverfield on any maps. A quick internet search brings up a nice old house called Cloverfield House, which is just south of Killarney, but it seems unlikely that Mary lived there. The Needham family lived in Templenoe, on the northern bank of Kenmare Bay, some miles south of Killarney and over the mountains. William and Mary were married at Templenoe Church. So where was Cloverfield?

It is possible that Mary was a housemaid at a country house, but surely then an occupation would be listed for her. If she had already terminated her employment in order to get married then surely her address would be listed as Templenoe.

The Hicksons of Killorglin and the Needhams of Templenoe

Mary’s father George is listed as Parish Clerk. Family tradition says that he was a captain in the Kerry Coastguard. But in 1858 he was already 56 years old and so it is likely that he had long since left the sea. He was a widower, since his wife had died two years earlier. But what did the Parish Clerk do? Did he work for the church? Or for the local council? He clearly performed clerical duties – his was a desk job.

But though he was a man of letters and numbers, George Needham was not gentry. He was the tenant of a local landowner, a certain Richard Mahoney, who lived in Dromore Castle, just down the road from the Needham home, which stood next to the Petty Sessions Court House and the local school. Richard’s father, Denis Mahony, is listed as George’s landlord on the Griffith’s Valuation on 1852, but by the time of William and Mary’s marriage, old Denis Mahony was dead.

William’s father Richard was, like William, a “nailor.” This occupation does not exist nowadays, but according to a dictionary of old occupations, a nailor was a metalworker who manufactured nails, which showed that the Hicksons were a working class family.

But despite this humble occupation it would seem the Hicksons were one of the noble families of Kerry. They could trace their ancestry back several hundred years through their connections with the Hickson family of Fermoyle and Dingle, who appear in the well known publication, Burke’s Landed Gentry.

Whether their noble heritage was of any importance to William Hickson or his father is unknown. But the youngest brother, John Christopher Hickson, the last in the Hickson family, seems to have been proud of his aristocratic connections. As one of the “new rich” in Sydney many years later John would name his home in Sydney The Grove, after a large house in Dingle which he referred to as the “family seat.”

Like George Needham, Richard Hickson was also a widower in 1858 when William and Mary married. His wife Mary Ann had died in 1853, when three of her seven children were still under 10 years old. John, the youngest, was just 5 years old when his mother died.

Migrations

The year their mother died the oldest of the Hickson family, Susan, migrated to Australia. Two years later, in 1855, the next two sisters, Mary and Ellen, also migrated to Australia. What prompted them to go is hard to know, but they had lived through the years of the Potato Famine which ravaged Ireland from 1845 to 1852, and had known much hardship. Their mother was dead. Thousands of people across Ireland were migrating, mostly to America, but some to Australia or other destinations. Prospects in Ireland seemed poor.

It was the girls of the Hickson family who were the pioneers, as far as migration was concerned, heading for the distant colony of New South Wales. Only one ended up there, in Sydney, the other two after they married eventually going further, to Victoria and Western Australia respectively.

Protestants in a Catholic community

How William Hickson met Mary Needham is open to conjecture, but contact through the church seems the most likely. They were both Protestants in a predominantly Catholic community. According to the National Archives of Ireland website for 1911, Kerry was one of 7 counties of Ireland where Catholics accounted for more than 95% of the population. According to another website Protestants accounted for just 3.3% of the population of Kerry in 1861.

The population of Kerry had plummeted over the decade from 1850 to 1860, with over 50,000 emigrating, more than 20% of the county’s population. Proportionately more Protestants had left than Catholics, and this continued. Anti-protestant feelings over the second half of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century led to a continuing haemorrhage of Protestants form the area. By 1911 there were “just 3,623 Church of Ireland members, 251 Methodists, 249 Presbyterians, 26 Jews, 67 members of various other assorted religions, and two people who refused to disclose what, if any, religion they held.” (National Archives of Ireland website.)

William and Mary were both part of the small Protestant community in Kerry. In 1858, the year they married, there can hardly have been more than five or six thousand Protestants in the county. A meeting between them, even if they lived a good few miles apart, and attended different churches, is not hard to imagine. And so the Hickson and Needham families were joined.

Marrying into the Needham family

Although Mary took William’s name I have the feeling that William left the Hicksons to marry Mary, rather than the other way around. Though they probably initially lived in Killorglin, I believe the couple eventually settled in Sneem, which was much closer to the Needham family home in Templenoe than to where William’s family lived. As already mentioned, William was a nailor, like his father, but it seems he became a smith, specifically a whitesmith. In those early years of their marriage they must surely have had frequent contact with Mary’s father and her nine younger siblings. Mary had been like a stand in parent after their own mother had died some years earlier, and it is likely that even after her marriage she remained in close contact with her younger brothers and sisters, as well as her ageing father.

Soon after they were married, William and Mary began a family of their own. Their first child, Richard, was born in 1859 and their second, Susie, in 1861. Then third, Mary-Anne, or Lizzie as she was always known, was born in 1863 or 4, not long before the family left Ireland for good.

So there were a lot of children in William and Mary’s lives in those early years of their marriage in Ireland. They had a lot of contact with Mary’s siblings, in particular, who lived so close. In 1858 when they married, her four youngest brothers were all still at school. George was 12, but Benjamin, Thomas and William were respectively 5, 4 and 2.

William’s younger siblings the year he married were a little older than the Needham youngsters: Kate was 14, George 13 and John 10, all living in Killorglin with their father. His three older sisters, Susan, Mary and Ellen had all left for Australia.

Evangelical revival and the Needhams

In 1861 there was a Christian revival within the Protestant church in Kerry, centred on the area in which William and Mary lived. The key figures in the revival were two of the local gentry, who happened to be close friends to each other: FC Bland and RJ Mahony. RJ (Richard) Mahony was the Needham’s landlord. FC Bland lived in a large house very close to William and Mary, in Sneem. The revival doubtless had a strong impact on William and Mary, as well as on the wider Needham family. The Hicksons of Killorglin, who lived further away, were likely less impacted, but William Hickson was like the Needhams, in the thick of things.

In 1863 with the revival in Kerry still in progress, Kate and her brother George Hickson migrated to Australia to join their older siblings, leaving young John, by then 15, the only one of the family still in Killorglin with his father. I believe that around that time John and his father went to live in Sneem with William and Mary. How they responded to the religious enthusiasm of William and Mary is uncertain. I have also wondered how the Catholic community in general viewed the religious antics of the Protestant gentry and their followers.

Migration to America

Two years later in 1865 William and Mary decided to migrate to North America, and William’s father went with them. Why they chose America and not Australia, where five of William’s siblings had already gone, is uncertain. It seems that while the Hickson’s chose Australia, the Needhams chose America, and William, having in a sense married into the Needham family, followed the Needham trend. His father came with him because he was too old to make the journey to Australia, where all his other children were, on his own.

Why did the Needhams choose America? I have wondered if it had something to do with the revival that they had experienced in 1861 and the years following. There had been a revival in Chicago in 1857 triggered partly by the preaching of a young evangelist DL Moody, and although civil war had broken out in 1861 over the vexed question of slavery in America, a minor revival had begun among soldiers during the latter years of the war as young battle weary men turned back to God. DL Moody was involved there too. Though he was a conscientious objector to military service he nevertheless made repeated visits to the battlefront to preach to the troops (Wikipedia).

Perhaps it was this movement of God’s Spirit in America, that attracted the Needham family to the area where they would eventually settle and live out their lives. DL Moody would play a significant part in their lives in the ensuing decades, particularly the lives of the four youngest of the Needham family, who all became evangelists. For Protestants from Kerry who had been enlivened by the fire of the Holy Spirit, and who lived in an environment of at best suspicion and at worse open hostility from the Catholic majority, Boston would have been an attractive destination.

Kerry, DL Moody and the Needhams

The connection between Moody and Ireland was not limited to the Needhams. In 1867, while visiting England, Moody met FC Bland, who had been one of the gentleman catalysts of the revival in Kerry, and a near neighbour of William and Mary (Needham) Hickson. The result of that meeting is described in a biography of DL Moody.

F.C. Bland, the High Sheriff of Kerry County, Ireland, was an influential worldling who became a Christian in the 1861 Kerry Revival. Bright, articulate and well educated, he quickly became a deep and perceptive student of the Bible. J. Edwin Orr wrote that Bland “drank deeply of Brethren teaching without ever joining their ranks,” presumably remaining a communicating member of the Church of Ireland. After Moody and Bland met in 1867, Moody was markedly impressed by the layman’s biblical knowledge and teaching skill. The two became friends, and, as Orr phrased it, the result was “Bland becoming Bible consultant of Dwight L. Moody.” (Dorset LW, A Passion for Souls, Moody Publishers, Chicago, 1997. p.140)

But by 1867 William, Mary, their three children (a third, Lizzie, was born in 1865) and William’s ageing father had all moved to America. Mary’s father, George, had died sometime between 1858 and 1863. In 1863 young Thomas Needham, aged 13, went to sea. By the end of the 1860s all of the Needhams had gone to America.

John Hickson persuades William to come to Australia

After the departure of William and his father for America, the only member of the Hickson family still in Ireland was John. It is unclear why he hadn’t left with his brother and father, and what he did in Ireland in the years after their departure is also uncertain. But in 1870 at the age of 22 he too decided to migrate, choosing Australia rather than joining his older brother William in Boston.

John married an Australian girl not long after his arrival. She was the daughter of freed convicts, her mother having been transported from County Down in Northern Ireland back in the 1830s. John and his wife raised a family of ten children and prospered greatly in Sydney and became very wealthy. He was a timber merchant with mills on the north coast of New South Wales as well as in Sydney.

He missed his older brother, and got it in his head that William and his family would be better off in Sydney than Boston. It may have been that William and Mary had run into problems of some kind in America. Perhaps the life they had hoped for had not eventuated, and John prevailed on them to come to Australia instead, the land of opportunity.

In 1877 John finally managed to persuade William and Mary to leave Boston, where they had lived for almost twelve years, and come to Australia. In this way Mary became the only one of the Needhams who ended up in Australia rather than North America. It was thus that my Irish-American great grandmother, Susie Hickson, arrived in Australia in 1878, a fresh faced 17 year old girl.

Looking back and looking forward

The following year Susie’s big brother, Richard, turned 20. The family, with seven children in all, had been in Sydney a little over a year, and were no doubt still in the adjustment phases after the upheaval of their second migration (the first for the last four children who were all American born). John Hickson, who had been the catalyst for their relocation, penned a birthday poem to his nephew, a copy of which has come down to me.

The first half of the poem recalls their lives together in Ireland before any of them had left for distant lands. It indicates that Richard had been born in Killorglin, on the Laune River, rather than Sneem, where his parents later settled. Killorglin was of course the home town of the Hicksons. John was just 11 years old when his nephew, Richard was born. It must have been a few years later that the teenage John went to live with his brother and sister in law in Sneem. Here are the first six stanzas of the poem, in which John looks back to the past:

J.C. Hickson to his nephew Richard Hickson on his 20th birthday, 31st July 1879.

The day was advancing, the bright sun was pouring Its beams through the leaves of the Elms in the Grove, The lark which the morn had seen loftily soaring, Had descended to guard the soft nest of it’s love.

The fair Laune was flowing in majestic splendour, The trout replied brisk to the angler’s fly, The reeds in the distance rose brighter and grander, All nature seemed pleased that last day of July.

O’er the field the light breezes of midsummer softly The meadows and bright corn whispering wooed Midst their shade undisturbed sang the Cormeraks gaily And the Cuckoo’s note rang loud tones from the wood.

Mid scenes of such beauty and fullest enjoyment, This baby was born with tribute to pay I have spared a few moments for mental employment, To coin a few lines for his twentieth birthday.

As a child in his cradle I rocked him to slumber Oft his bright chubby form I have nursed on my knee But as boy our firm friendship was riven asunder, For early he crossed o’er Atlantic’s blue sea.

For years in the land where Stars and Stripes gaily Float proudly o’er freedom’s intelligent race;- His boyhood was spent but on my mind daily Engraved the last sight of his bright happy face.

Time sped, and the web of life’s intricate weaving Revolved till again on Australia’s fair strand After crossing the ocean with billows upheaving I felt on these shores the firm grasp of his hand.

There follow a whole lot of reflections on life and the poem concludes with two stanzas of encouragement for the future that lies before young Richard as he embarks on adulthood in his newly adopted home. It is interesting to note in the first line a sense of uncertainty about Richard’s future: would he stay in Australia, or would he return to the USA, the land he likely thought of as home. What was he thinking? Who was he missing? And how did he feel about the future?

If this fair southern land be the scene of thy fame, E’en though by adoption, its freedom uphold, With jealousy guard against taunt thy fair name As life’s fitful picture before thee unfold.

I wish you success in each business of life Be guided by prudence and wisdom and love; And when your course run you shall cease from the strife, May your labours find rest in the haven above.

Richard never returned to America as far as I know. He married and had six children whose descendants live in and around Sydney. I have no knowledge or contact with any of them. His parents, William and Mary, lived out their days in Sydney and are buried there. Their daughter Suzie married an Irishman and raised a family in Sydney. One of their daughters was my grandmother. The third of the Irish born children in the family, Lizzy, also married but never had any biological children. She and her husband adopted a daughter. The four other Hickson children, all born in America, I have very scant knowledge of.

John Hickson clearly had a soft spot for Richard. When John liked someone it was obvious and he showered them with favours. Unfortunately he also disliked some people strongly, and that was equally obvious. When his daughter, some years later, fell for another of his countrymen, the young Richard Byrne, recently arrived from Kerry, John did everything in his power to hinder their relationship. But that is another story that I have told elsewhere.

The Hickson and Needham heritage

While the Hickson story was one of material prosperity in Australia, the Needham legacy in North America was more a spiritual one. But when William and Mary came to Australia in 1878 they brought some of that with them, the Moody effect. And even if none of John Hickson’s material wealth has lasted through the generations to me and my family, I have certainly felt the influence of Mary (Needham) Hickson’s religious tendencies in my lifetime come down to me through her daughter Susie, and Susie’s daughter Gertrude, and through Gert’s daughter, my mother.

Ardgay, between Gledfield and Kincardine, looking south from Bonar Bridge across the Dornoch Firth

Sometime around 1821 or 1822 James Andrew Ross (1794-1866) of Edderton, Ross-Shire, married Catherine Urquhart (1800-1887) of Golspie, Sutherland. They had at least 12 children over the next 25 years, though there may have been more since children so often died in infancy in those days. James was a blacksmith and he set up shop, and established a home in Gledfield, about 9 miles north west of Edderton, near where the Carron River flows into the Kyle of Sutherland, which becomes the Dornoch Firth.

It was a big family. There were 8 boys and 5 girls. Donald was firstborn (1823) and after him came Ann (1824). John followed in 1826 and James in 1827. Six more children were born in the 1830s – Helen, Catherine (Katie), Andrew, George and Alexander (Sandy) and Mary. Malcolm was born in 1840, Hector in 1843 and finally Jane in 1844. There is one anomaly, namely that Mary Ross, born 1839, is listed as Mary Ann Ross McLachlan in the 1851 census. The significance of her extra name is hard to explain. Was she adopted? There are no other McLachlans in the family, but it is possible that she was a relative whose parents died. She does not appear in the 1861 census, but may have been married by that time. I have no other information about her.

Of the boys 6 became blacksmiths, which was understandable given James’ trade. Donald, John, Andrew, George, Malcolm and Hector all followed their father’s trade. James took up carpentry, later becoming a journeyman joiner. Sandy became a teacher. Of the girls, Ann married in her early twenties and had three children, although her husband died in his twenties, soon after the birth of the third. Helen and Jane married in Australia. Kate remained at home and cared for her ageing parents until her tragic death, drowned in the Carron River at age 48.

Four of the Ross family migrated. First Andrew and his sister Helen left in 1857. They sailed on the Alfred from Liverpool. Both Andrew and Helen married in Australia, Andrew to Janet Anderson, another Scot, and Helen to James Redstone, an English immigrant. Both families settled in the Bellinger Valley of northern NSW. Nine years later, in 1866, James Ross, his wife and four children, migrated. They sailed on a ship called the Africana, and his youngest sister, Jane Ross, sailed with them. James and Mary Ross remained in Sydney, where James continued his trade as a carpenter and joiner. They had more children. Jane, however, moved north to her brother Andrew and his young family. Jane ended up marrying the Andrew’s wife’s brother, David Anderson. So of the four Rosses to migrate three died in the Bellingen area, but James Ross died and is buried in Sydney.

Of the nine children who remained in Scotland, two never married – Kate and Hector. Ann married Hugh Aird and they had three children before Hugh died in 1855 at the age of 28. One of their daughters, Hughina, married the schoolmaster at Gledfield, but died at the age of 42 in 1894. What became of Donald and George Ross I have yet to discover. John moved to England where for a time he lived with his brother James, in Birkenhead near Liverpool. However, John died in 1862 when he was only 36 years of age. He is buried in Kincardine. He was survived by his wife Betsy and their children. Sandy became a teacher and ended up the schoolmaster at Ferintosh. He too married and had a family. What became of Mary I have no information about.

Malcolm and Hector took over the family business, the Gledfield smithy, after their father died in 1866, the same year that James and Jane left for Australia. Malcolm was 26 and Hector 23 that year. Neither was married. They lived in Gledfield with their unmarried sister Kate and their ageing mother. Malcolm eventually married Jane Munro, but they never had any children. Both are buried in the Kincardine churchyard. Kate died in 1879. Malcolm died in 1897 at age 57 and his wife Jane lived to the age of 59, dying in 1911 in Edinburgh.

At the dawn of the twentieth century only 57 year old Hector was left in Gledfield. He was unmarried and lived in the house next to the smithy. Only three of his siblings survived into the 1900s – a brother in Scotland and two sisters in Australia. Sandy died in 1902. Helen and Jane lived on the far side of the world, in rural Australia. They died in 1916 and 1905 respectively.

Hector Ross. Downloaded from Ancestry.com. From Judy Horrigan.

I recently received a copy of a letter that was sent to Don Robinson by someone who knew the family, a certain Harriet Smith, of Ardgay. Don must have met her on his travels. The letter is dated 1978. Here is a slightly edited extract (thanks to Judy Horrigan who sent me a scanned copy):

I can only tell you little bits I know about them told me by my late Mother – born March 1872 died June 1968 – so she was well acquainted with them. She was a very near neighbour of theirs and in her early teens was engaged as their domestic help. The house then consisted of Hector, Malcolm, and their old bedridden mother and Malcolm’s wife, Jeannie (Jane). My mother spoke quite a lot to me of her early service there. There was a big family of sons and as far as I remember it included a Donald, George, Alexander (Sandy) and I know there was a sister Katie who was accidentally drowned in the River Carron quite close by. I was born 1906 and so I do remember Hector and saw him often at his work in the “smiddy.” I never saw Malcolm and Auntie Jeannie died in an Edinburgh hospital in 1910 following an operation.

The old mother was senile and very restless and troubled in her mid due to this. Malcolm was very fond of his mother and never went out from his meals but went to her bedside and spoke a comforting word to her and I always remember my mother telling me that he’d say, “What is it mother? God so loved that he gave his only Beloved Son__” Both brothers were very good Christian men. Uncle Malcolm had a lovely singing voice and used to sit at the fireside singing hymns – a favourite chorus was,
“I am coming Lord, coming now to thee.
Wash me, cleanse me in the blood that flowed at Calvary.”

… Hector never married but lived on in the home with a succession of housekeepers and when he got too old for their care he went to live in the little village of Edderton which is nine miles south of Ardgay with people of the name of Aird. You say who were the Airds? Well I’m sure that I’m not making a mistake when I say that Donald Aird, who kept a little grocers shop there, was a nephew of H & M. Another niece, Donald Aird’s sister, was married to a local schoolmaster here G G McLeod – his family tombstone is very close to Uncle Malcolm’s. G G McLeod had a big family of daughters (9 I think) and one son, another James. I’m sure Donald Aird had a son, “Hector.”

Hector died in 1929 and is buried with his parents and his sister Kate in the churchyard in Kincardine. As far as I know there are no Rosses of this family left in the Gledfield-Ardgay-Kincardine area now, though there are possibly McLeods and Airds.

Family grave of James and Catherine Ross, also Catherine (Katie) their daughter and Hector their son. Headstone erected by Hector.

The following is from a record that I have from Don Robinson, who researched the Ross family in the 1990s. My grandmother was Winifred Ross, one of William Ross’s five daughters. William was born in Birkenhead, UK, the son of James Urquhart Ross, who was born in the Scottish Highlands. He migrated to Australia with his wife and children in 1866.

Helen, about 1860. She married James Redstone (from Winchester, England) in Sydney in 1862 and had four children. Remained in Sydney for some years.

Andrew, about 1865. Went to Bellingen, on the north coast of NSW some 300 miles north of Sydney, a beautiful farming area on the Bellingen River, near Coff’s Harbour, where a number of Scots had settled. He married Janet Anderson there in 1867. Her family was from Stirling, Scotland.

James, in 1866, with his wife, Mary Ann Marston, and four children. James, a journeyman joiner, had spent some years in England. His wife, Mary, was from Welshpool, and they had been living in Birkenhead prior to their emigration. The four children included William Frederick. James settled in Sydney, in the inner suburb of Newtown, where four more children were born, and then at Enfield, a suburb a little further out, in a house they called “Ferintosh”. James died in 1891 and was buried in the church yard of the parish church of St Thomas, Enfield

Jane, the youngest of the family, came out with James and his family. She went to Bellingen to her older brother Andrew, where she married David Anderson, brother of Andrew’s wife Janet.

Helen, Andrew and Jane all lie buried in the little bush cemetery at Fernmount, near Bellingen, along with some of their descendants. There are still Ross descendants living in that area.

Donald Robinson, September 1997

Note:
I have recently discovered that Helen and Andrew came out to Australia together in 1857, sailing in the ship, Alfred, out of Liverpool, arriving in Sydney in July. Helen, like Andrew and Jane, ended up in the Bellinger Valley of northern NSW.

The Hicksons were an old Protestant family whose Hickson forebears had crossed to Ireland from England in the time of Cromwell. Their ancestral seat was “The Grove” at Dingle, 30 miles or more west of Tralee in county Kerry, and a few miles from the western extremity of Ireland.

Don Robinson and Dad (who are cousins) are great grandsons of John Hickson (1848-1945), the youngest son of Richard and Mary Hickson, who lived in the early 1800s in Country Kerry. Don has written a fascinating account of John Hickson, which I will quote in full below. Two other brothers, William and George, as well as a sister, Kate, are mentioned by name in this account, since they all migrated to Australia, though William first migrated to America and later to Australia. William, who was 15 years older than John, is of equal interest to me because Mum was descended from him. Mum and Dad are therefore distantly related to each other, though they had no idea of this at the time they married.

Don’s account of John Christopher Hickson (slightly edited) is as follows:

JCH was born on the 2 September 1848 and bred in the small town called Killorglin, on the Laune River as it flows from the Killarney Lakes to the sea. Some part of his boyhood was spent in the picturesque village of Sneem, on the wild rocky coast Kerry, where he had Needham relatives. He was the youngest of a large family, which dispersed to various parts of the world. His mother, Mary Ann (nee Carter), and some of his brothers and sisters died in Killorglin, but his father Richard, a shopkeeper, went with his elder brother William to America, Richard lies buried in North Cemetery at Providence, near Boston.

JCH came to Australia alone (a doctor advised a warm climate for his weak chest) and went to work for George Hudson the timber merchant. Impatient of his slow progress, he began his own timber business, and soon owned his own mills at Nabiac on the Walamba River, and a yard at Darling Harbour, at the foot of Liverpool Street. He was always an enthusiast for the possibilities of Australia, and he persuaded his brother William to come here from America, and another brother George from Ireland, who married Agnes Harper in St. Phillip’s on 9 November 1870. His sister Kate also settled here, and married Hugh Breckenridge, an artist. A daughter of Robert Breckenridge, Hugh’s brother, subsequently owned “The Grange” at Mount Victoria, formerly owned by the Schleichers, and today by the C.S.S.M.

JCH was a member of the first Sydney Regiment when it was formed in the 1860’s. On 25 January 1872, he married Martha Watts who had been born in Balmain N.S.W. on the 20th June 1848, to William Watts, farmer and Mary nee (Mountgarret), then living in Balmain. The marriage was at St. Luke’s Sussex St., Sydney (now demolished) By Rev. Thomas Unwin. They had eleven children: Alice (Mrs. Ross), Edith (Mrs. Layton), George, Mabel (Mrs. Robinson), Maud, Aubrey, Stanley, Percy, Eunice, Hilda (Mrs. Doyle) and Roland. Maud died as a child. My grandmother Alice, was the eldest of the family. She was born on 10 November 1872, at Botany Road, Waterloo.

The Hickson home was later in Cleveland Street facing Albert Park, and is perhaps still standing. But while Alice was still a girl, JCH moved to Summer Hill at which time my grandmother attended the first service in the new St Andrew’s Church on 5 September 1885, when the Rector John Vaughan preached on the text “Come and See”. In the 1880’s JCH moved again to a house called “The Grove” in Liverpool St. Enfield, and I still have the use of a Latin dictionary which bears Alice’s name, with “High School Sydney, 1886” inscribed. The Hicksons were associated with St. Thomas’s Church at Enfield, where Alice was prepared for confirmation by Rev. E. S. Wilkinson, and where she was later married by him on the 24th, August, 1896, the first couple married in the renovated St. Thomas’s Church.

In 1893 JCH made a trip around the world, including a visit to the World Fair at Chicago and pilgrimage to his old family haunts in Ireland. He had friends and relatives (many from Kerry like himself) in a number of places both in America and the British Isles; one such was the Rev. B Needham, a relative, minister of the Baptist Church in Coatesville, near Philadelphia; and a friend of boyhood days, who showed many kindnesses in London, was the chief inspector at Scotland Yard, Mr. Melville. JCH took my grandmother (Alice, then aged 21) with him on this trip, partly, it is said, to prevent a romance with Richard Byrne (who had been born in Killarney, Ireland, and whose family was well known to the Hicksons.) She seems to have had a gay time on the trip. JCH published an account of his journey under the title “Notes of Travel, From Pacific to Atlantic’, with description of the World fair at Chicago, and travels by sea and land around the world. It was printed at Parramatta by Fuller’s Lighting Printing Works Company, and ran to about 80 octavo pages. Much of the information of his early years has been obtained from this, and it contains some interesting material, including the fact they went to hear D.L. Moody preach a number of times in Chicago, and on one occasion JCH pushed through the throng to speak to and shake the hand of the great evangelist.

On 24 August 1895, shortly after their return, Alice married my grandfather, William Frederick Ross, of Heydon St., Enfield.

JCH continued to prosper, and at this time owned a timber yard near Burwood station in Railway Parade, where the Metropolitan Funeral Home now stands. He bought a holiday home on the southern highlands at Balmoral – ‘Glen Gariffe’, (named after a town in Ireland), where my mother spent many holidays as a girl. When he was only 46, at the time of his trip abroad, he had retired from active work, and about 1906 he moved from Enfield to Manly, where he bought a large house, ‘Kyamba’ (still standing 1960), in Addison Road, and lived on the income from his various properties.

In 1911 he went to England again, for the coronation of George V, with his wife. On the return journey Martha caught cholera at Naples, and was buried in the Mediterranean Sea on the 18th July 1911. Four months after his arrival home, JCH married again, to Miss Alice Elizabeth Hammett, who had been on the ship (coming out to marry someone in Western Australia) and had nursed Martha Hickson, on the voyage.

JCH became a churchwarden and treasurer at St. Matthew’s Manly, and when the new church was built he was the clerk of works. He fell out with the Rector, the Rev. A.R. Ebbs, over matters of financial policy.

When Alice Elizabeth died, JCH, now 77, went to England again and returned with a third bride, Isabel Hewitt Parkinson who survived him. He placed a fine brass Lectern in St. Matthew’s in memory of Alice Elizabeth. His later years were spent in a flat at number 9 Victoria Parade, Manly, where he died in 1945 at the age of 97. He had hoped to live to be 100, to see his descendants to the fourth generation, and to see the end of the war. But none of these hopes was fulfilled. He paid my university fees in 1941, and offered to do so for the rest of my course, but the war interrupted my studies. He left 100 pounds to each of his great grandsons. He retained his faculties to the end of his life, and enjoyed conversations with S.M. Johnstone and T. C. Hammond, both Irishmen like himself.

He never forgave my grandmother for her second marriage, when she was 70, to Dick Byrne.

When he first married and lived in Redfern, JCH was friendly with Nathaniel Taubman, my wife’s grandfather with whom he used to walk to work in Waterloo.